Most Indian families have the same situation: a few hundred photographs in envelopes and sticky-page albums in a cupboard, and exactly one copy of each. They are fading, the sticky albums are actively damaging them, and everybody agrees somebody should do something.
This is the somebody-should-do-something, in order.
Step 1: get them out of the sticky albums
Do this first and do it carefully, because it is the only irreversible part.
Those self-adhesive albums with the plastic film — the ones every household bought in the eighties and nineties — use an adhesive that yellows and bonds to the print over time. Photos left in them keep degrading.
⚠️ Do not force a stuck photograph. If it does not lift with gentle pressure at a corner, leave it and photograph it in place. A torn original cannot be undone; a slightly reflective copy can.
Step 2: digitise, and a phone is genuinely fine
You do not need a scanner. A modern phone camera outresolves what a 4×6 print holds.
What matters, in order:
- Flat. Put the print on a table, not held in a hand.
- Daylight, indirect. Next to a window, not in sun. Never use flash — it blows out the centre of a glossy print.
- Directly overhead, phone parallel to the photo. Angle is what makes copies look like copies.
- Fill the frame with the photograph and crop afterwards.
- One at a time. Shooting a whole album page and cropping later loses resolution exactly where you need it.
A rough pace is sixty prints an hour once you have a rhythm. Two evenings covers most family archives.
⚠️ Photograph the back too, wherever anything is written there. Names, dates and places, in handwriting belonging to people who may not be around to ask. That information is worth more than the image, and it is routinely lost at this step.
Step 3: sort before you choose
Do not start picking favourites. Sort into rough piles first — by decade, by household, by event. The structure of the book emerges from this and it is much harder to impose later.
Chronological is usually not the best order. By household or by chapter — the village house, the years in the city, the weddings — reads as a book. A strict timeline of mixed subjects reads as a pile.
Step 4: cut, which is the hard part
Four photographs fill a page. That number is what turns an abstract “let’s make an album” into a decision.
| Scope | Pages | Roughly this many photos | Ours |
|---|---|---|---|
| One decade, or one household | 16 | 64 | ₹599 |
| A family, one generation | 24 | 96 | ₹699 |
| Two generations | 32 to 40 | 128 to 160 | ₹899 to ₹1,099 |
For the full archive done properly, a hardcover album runs ₹1,299 to ₹2,299. Flat ₹70 delivery anywhere in India.
Include the imperfect ones. Blurred, badly composed, someone blinking — old family photographs are not competing on technical quality, and the awkward ones are frequently where people stop. What to cut is repetition, not imperfection.
Step 5: write the names down
This is the step that decides whether the book is useful in twenty years.
For every photograph where you can identify someone, write who it is. Do it while the people who know are still available to ask — that window closes, and it closes without warning.
One line per page is enough: who, where, roughly when. How to interview your parents first covers getting those details out of them properly, which is a bigger job than it sounds and worth doing before you print.
Do it with somebody in the room
If you can, digitise with a parent or an older relative sitting beside you.
It doubles the time and it is worth it, because they will narrate as you work — who that is, where it was taken, what happened afterwards, which house that was. You are trying to produce two things from this box and only one of them is a set of image files. The other is the information, and it exists in exactly one place.
Record the audio on your phone while you work. You will not remember half of what gets said, and transcribing four sentences later is easier than asking again.
On resolution and damage
Faded is usually fine. Small is not. A washed-out print can be improved; a two-inch print enlarged across half a page cannot be rescued, because the detail was never captured.
Check anything you plan to run large. If it looks soft at full screen on a laptop, it will look soft on paper.
⚠️ We print what you send — we do not repair or restore photographs. If something is torn or heavily damaged and you want it fixed rather than reproduced as-is, that is specialist work and it happens before you order.
When not to do this
When the originals are not yours to move. Photographs in a family home usually belong to whoever lives there. Ask before you take an envelope away, and return everything.
When one person considers themselves the keeper of the archive. In a lot of families somebody does. Involve them or expect friction.
When you are doing it under time pressure. This is a six-week project done properly and a weekend project done badly, and the difference is visible on every page.
When the images are all too small. Look before you commit. Thirty tiny prints do not make a book worth the effort.
Timing
5 to 14 days from order to doorstep, 5 to 12 to Delhi NCR, flat ₹70 anywhere. Dispatch is weekly on Mondays, so a Friday order catches that week’s dispatch and a weekend order waits seven days. Add two to four days for design and your proof approval.
The printing is the fast part. Budget six weeks overall: two evenings digitising, a couple of weeks asking relatives who people are, then the edit.
Frequently asked
How do I digitise old photographs without a scanner? A phone works. Lay the print flat, use indirect daylight with no flash, shoot directly overhead, and do them one at a time rather than a page at once.
Should I take photos out of sticky albums? Gently, yes — that adhesive keeps damaging them. But never force one. If it does not lift easily, photograph it in place.
How many old photos do I need for an album? About four fill a page, so 64 for a 16-page book and 96 for 24 pages.
Can faded or damaged photographs be printed? Faded usually reproduces acceptably. We print what you send and do not restore or repair, so anything torn needs specialist work first.
What is the most commonly skipped step? Photographing the back of the print. Handwritten names and dates are worth more than the image, and once the people who could identify them are gone they cannot be recovered.
Part of our guide to gifts for parents. See also: planning a photo book of their life.
Shop: Personalised gifts for parents · Hardcover albums · Photo magazines from ₹499 · Hardcover Albums from ₹1,299
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